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tv   FOX Report  FOX News  December 29, 2012 4:00pm-5:00pm PST

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this is a fox report. tonight new information on the
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health of president george h.w. bush. his family issuing a statement on his condition a short time ago. and they put it off for months. law i can makers holding our future in their hands and now barely enough time to strike a deal to save us from one of the highest tax hikes in u.s. history. >> senators and staffers now behind closed doors. we are told they are trying to put together a plan to help us from all going over the fiscal cliff. we are within 72 hours of the deadline, and tonight the new developments. in the wake of the shooting at sandy hook elementary, gun sales are on the rise. what is driving the spike? and the growing number of teachers who are looking to arm themselves. also, one man's trash becomes a child's musical treasure. you'll meet the children's orchestra that plays instruments recycled from
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garbage. >> i'm harris falkner. they are actually negotiating on capitol hill just as economic analysts say we are about to go over the so-called fiscal cliff, the punishing combination of higher taxes on just about every worker in america and deep spending cuts particularly to our military. top lawmakers are calling in staff members for meetings on this saturday. right now we are told senate leaders are working on a potential deal. still our journalists on the hill are being told there will be no official proposals or votes until tomorrow at the very earliest. the time line qoo -- could not be tighter. we will begin seeing lower tax rates expiring and federal aid for things like unemployment checks. here is a statistic for you. if there is no deal in place for january 1st, those benefits, those unemployment benefits will no longer be authorized.
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the law project estimates some two million americans will stop receiving benefits after december 29th. that's today. many experts fear going over the cliff could send our weak economy plunging back into a recession. president obama says he remains optimistic, but he says no bargain could be reached in congress, then congress must vote on his back up plan to block taxes for anybody making less than $250,000 a year. chief congressional correspondent mike emmanuel has more. mike, you just got new details 23r* mitch mcconnell. what are they? >> that's right. discussions have been taking place all day. both sides have been trading paper, ideas and that talks continue. we understand legislative staff will continue working into this evening. meanwhile, huer is a fair and balanced look at where things stand. >> i do think that something will happen over the next few days relative to the revenue piece.
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hopefully we can rescue most americans from a tax increase. but what we haven't dealt with again is the spending component. jay we just can't afford -- >> we just can't afford a politically self-inflicted wound to our economy. keeping it that way means folks you sent to washington have to do their jobs. the housing market is healing, but that could stall as folks are seeing smaller paychecks. >> with time running out, it sounds like conservatives may have to fight spending when raising the debt ceiling is the new fight in the new year. harris? >> mike, democrats say they know they need republican help to get this through. they are counting on a top republican to be a deal maker. who is that person? >> that's right. mitch mcconnell, the senate minority leader we just talked about moments ago, he had been keeping a low profile and allowing speaker john boehner to negotiate directly with the president of the united states. but now a number of democrats including white house officials believe mcconnell be key.
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>> we ar engaged in -- we are engaged in discussions, the majority leader and myself in the hopes that we can come forward as early as sunday and have a recommendation that i could make and the majority leader can make to his conference. >> sources say speaker boehner deferred to their meeting and he told them the house leaders would consider, accept or amend their plan. >> house republicans have moved up a meeting that we know is scheduled for monday. i understand now it is going to happen potentially tomorrow night. should we take that as a good sign? >> well, harris, several key republican sources say the feeling is getting house republicans together sooner rather than later to get a sense of their thinking after they return to the capital. one critical issue in all of this is the threshold that will be set for ks tending the -- for extending the bush tax cuts. >> the 400 level is seems about right, about the top 1%
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of income earners in the country. >> we need to save tax hikes on as many americans as we can. i feel like a lifeguard, and we have to save as many people from drowning in higher taxes as we can. >> we heard moments ago that the discussions continue into this evening. paper is being traded. tomorrow is setting up to be a huge day on capitol hill. >> a late night already for you tonight too. we will check back as the news warrants. thank you very much. part of the looming fiscal cliff includes a painful dose of automatic spending cuts that would kick in just a few days from now. our military would be on the receiving end of a lot of it. a half trillion dollars in cuts over the next decade. it has a fancy name. it is called see -- sequestration. many warn of job losses and even the impact on the national security. now, the news on this from washington. >> harris, last friday when president obama rolled out his new plan for steering us away from the fiscal cliff there was a word he did not say.
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that word was sequester. it would cut $100 billion from the budget next year, half from domestic programs and half from defense programs. and now as the deadline draws close, experts are look at these cuts from a national security standpoint and warning one final time about their impact on the safety of our service members. >> it is going to affect the operational force that is deployed in terms of its you ability to maintain its equipment and get repair parts. that force is deployed around the world. it is not just the force in afghanistan that is being reduced. it would impact on the training of the force. and its preparedness to conduct other operations. >> white house officials say it is unclear what will happen with the sequester. on friday republican senator john mccain said he doesn't see how a deal gets done without addressing these across the board cuts which could cost a lot of contractors their jobs. >> now, the large defense contractors will probably be okay. they have significant cash
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reserves most of them. the smaller contractors would have trouble getting their lines of credit extended, trouble keeping their employees if they can't be assured of continued employment. >> the only way to avoid the automatic $492 billion in cuts to the pentagon over the next nine years is for congress to make a deal in the next two days. harris? >> peter, thank you. fox weather alert now. a new headache for travelers. tonight a fresh storm system is pummeling the northeast. as you know much of the region and really the rest of the country are recovering from the winter storm that hit earlier in the week. this new round of weather bringing even more snow, freezing rain and strong winds already causing some flight delays and making the roads dangerous. meteorologist justin povik with the accu-weather. justin? >> harris, i tell you, we cannot catch a break across the northeast and the nation's midsection. not to leave out the west
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coast. they have been stormy and wet, especially around san francisco. the meat of the storm system has been targeting the ohio valley and the northeast, and the latest is doing its dirty work across the coastal sections. the i-95 corridor. the worst of the worst we will target boston over the course of the next three to four hours approaching an inch an hour. snow totals across the interior north ease ranges from 6 to 12 inches and this is coming on coming on the heels of the foot of snow we saw a couple days ago. looking at the winter in full force here. it is all throughout the northeast. again like i said boston looking at some of the worst conditions throughout the evening time frame. travel is very dicey and very slippery. we will see our winds pick up to around 20 miles per hour. snow streaks north and eastbound. this will be an allout blizzard. if you are doing some traveling later this week, 2013 is just around the corner. a little stripe throughout the
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ohio valley. this will be a big storm system and there will be impact to the gulf coast. snow showers throughout the northeast and chilly, but more importantly, dry and calm out along the west coast. i want to talk about the temperatures a little later next week. this will be the coolest numbers. they will target the northeast. these will be temperatures only in the single digits. we will have to dig out the gloves and heavier coat for that. >> so from snow to bitter cold , justin pocick, thank you very much. >> you bet. right now we are monitoring the condition of former president george h.w. bush. he has been in the hospital as we have reported with a stubborn fever. yesterday we learned his health was improving a little bit, and just hours ago more reassuring news. we will take you live to the hospital in houston. also, it is a nightmare for new yorkers. standing on a subway platform, and they are usually very crowded. when somebody pushes you in front of a moving train.
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this week it happened again. police now say someone has been charged in this. and a twist in their investigation, now they are calling this one a hate crime. stay close.
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positive change as we update you on our nation's 41st president. president george h.w. bush is now out of intensive care. doctors moving him into a regular patient room at the houston hospital where they
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have been treating him since november. president bush who is 88 years old, the oldest living former president, and tonight we are glad to report he is on the mend. mike tobin is live outside the methodist hospital in houston, texas. mike, this is a big development. >> and certainly a welcome development. george herbert walker bush did a little less than a week in the intensive care unit. it was a fever that was triggered by a case of bronchitis that has had him in the hospital since the end of november. doctors feel there is no more need to be monitored in the icu. his condition continues to improve, harris. >> you know, we have been hearing all along that he has been chatting and singing. i understand though he got a call from the oak ridge boys. >> isn't that neat? apparently this is barbara bush's idea. once they heard about it the oak ridge boys were more than happy to gather around a speaker phone to see if they
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couldn't lift the president's spirits. >> ♪ amazing grace ♪ how sweet ♪ the sound >> they are old friends, and the president is a fan. the song selection "amazing grace" as you heard and of course" elvira." it provided him a needed shot in the arm, the good kind, not the kind you normally get in the hospital. >> good point. glad to hear the good news. a terrifying morning at a phoenix bank. police and fbi responding to a call about a hostage situation and concerns about a possible bomb. an fbi spokesperson saying bank of america employees arrived at work earlier today to find a co-worker with a device around her neck. they called in the bomb squad. detectives removed the device finding it was not explosive. investigators say the bank employee had been taken hostage at her home the night before and held against her will overnight. police say the man who did it took her then to the bank this
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morning, but left her there. he was gone by the time the other employees arrived. they say he didn't get into the vault. no word yet on where he is now. in new york, subway riders, and there are hundreds of thousands of them, getting word the person who pushed -- who was pushed on to the tracks in front of a train this week may have been the victim of a hate crime. police say the woman they arrested for the fatal push has confessed. prosecutors have now charged her with murder as a hate crime. they released surveillance video showing a possible suspect running from the scene. police found that person after a passerby on the street noticed she looked like the woman in the video. authorities saying the suspect told them she hates hindus and muslims, although it is not clear if the victim was either one of those. witnesses say the attacker was muttering to herself on thursday night before approaching the man and shoving him off the platform in front of a speeding subway train to his death. ?ai a passenger plane slid off the runway and exploded into flames. people died at the scene.
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what we are learning now about how this happened in minutes. and reports the first official lawsuit in the wake of the masacre at sandy hook elementary. and it is coming from the family of sun who survived.
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in russia a crash scene at the country's third busiest airport. and now we have learned at least four people died there and others were badly injured. the airliner slid off the runway which is about 17 miles from the center of moscow. the plane landing partly on the highway before breaking into pieces and catching fire. officials saying there were those eight people on board because the jet was returning from the czech republic.
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they say initial indications point to pilot error as the cause. into. a new development in the wake of the connecticut school masacre. an attorney seeking permission to sue the state for $100 million on behalf of a six-year-old survivor. the attorney says the potential lawsuit is about improving school security. it is not about money, he says. he claims the connecticut board of education and the state education commissioner failed to take steps to protect the children from, quote, foreseeable harm. he says his client whom he is not identifying suffered serious emotional and psychological trauma as a result of the shooting. the fbi is reporting an increase in a request for background checks for new gun purchases in the wake of the connecticut school shooting. this as new bills have been introduced calling forearmed teachers. claudia is live in los angeles. claudia, we know some states allow teachers to bring licensed concealed weapons into public schools. >> yes, just a few do, harris,
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allowing it without exception, hawaii, new hampshire, oregon and utah. we are in salt lake city and hundreds attended a training seminar. in a violent situation the educators were taught to first initiate a lock down, but if that failed, the teachers want to know how to respond properly. >> you know, i think that a lot of people have a fear of guns and what they can do. but i think also maybe they are not quite educated, but sometimes the only thing that will stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. >> critics argue arming teachers is dangerous and warns risks such as accidental shootings or an intruder over powering the teacher for their gun. even so arizona and washington state are looking into the idea and may be the next to allow teachers to carry a concealed weapon on campus. >> what about the background checks? i understand some states are having a difficult time managing the requests.
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>> they are. no official data on gun sales over the past few weeks, but signs suggest they are way up. a spike in attendance at gun shows is one inned case cater -- is one indicator and background checks conducted by the fbi. it is also at the state level. law enforcement officials say they need more money, half a million dollars more. it used to take less than half an hour, but now it takes roughly a week with agents working over time. background checks are free in colorado which means they are being subsidized by the taxpayers, and it has one lawmaker recommending that if a person wants to buy a gun, they should pay for the background check themselves. >> thank you very much. our senior pro disuser on capitol -- producer on capitol hill is standing by and wants to tell us about the latest movements happening right now. you are looking live at capitol hill, our nation ace capital. our nation's capital. he will tell us what the
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efforts are to keep the nation's economy from plunging off the so-called fiscal cliff into the higher taxes and deep spending cuts moments away. plus, an enormous drug smuggling tunnel discovered under a suburban home. wow. where this was located. and the clue that up ited off police. that tipped off police.
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some families now in america living in limbo after
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russian president vladimir putin signed a laurie sphricting them from adopting children. they called it retaliation for a law that targets human rights violators. basically it is a political game with little children caught in the middle. right now few are hurting more than those families already matched with orphans and waiting to bring them home. melissa cutler from kdfw in dallas has more. >> we hoped she would get to come home for christmas. we are hoping now it is her valentine dress. >> they were just two months away from making a five-year-old russian girl with down syndrome a part of their family. >> she is not hard to love. not at all hard to love. >> they plan to rename her anna faith. >> most of the toys that we have collected are infant toys because she is not developmentally she is much more like a 9 to
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12-month-old. >> but the adoption ban signed by russian president vladimir few pin put all of that -- putin put all of that on hold. now they wait. >> shock is not really a term that describes our feelings. we are very disappointed and mostly heart broken. >> they are not alone in their disappointment. >> you want to do legos ? >> including this one-time disabled orphan from russia. this 21-year-old came to the united states when he was 15 and made incredible strides. a famous poet in his homeland when he was just 12, this ut grad now has prosthetic legs and can now walk. better yet, he has a family. >> i know how much my life has changed. >> the united nations children fund unicef estimate there are 740,000 orphans in russia and historically more of russia's orphans have gone to america over any other country. our thanks to melissa cutler from kdfw in dallas for that
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story. this is the fox report. it is the bottom of the hour now and time for the top of the news. last minute back and forth negotiations are happening at this hour behind closed doors on capitol hill. a live look as top senate leaders try to find a solution to the fiscal cliff. and it looks like they are not planning to take a break anytime soon. for more on what may be going on inside the capitol tonight, we are joined by fox senior producer. before the commercial, chad, i was saying you had new developments. tell us about it. >> the senate minority leader mitch mcconnell left the capitol in the past half hour or so. he says they continue to trade paperback and forth, but they have nothing to announce tonight. they will work late into the night. there are legislative aides here. my colleague was told by a senior aide that there is no major progress. the key right now is trying to get a proposal ready for when
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the senate comes in tomorrow afternoon. what they want to do is have the republicans meet in one room and the democrats meet in another and present at least on paper maybe in bullet point form and maybe not a full piece of legislative text what this proposal might look like to avoid the fiscal cliff. and then if they can get by, then try to forge ahead sunday night or monday morning or something like that. the trick is also going to be the house of representatives. the house is back tomorrow night. they will have votes. they will have all 435 members here. there are 13 bills on the docket for tomorrow. none of which deal with the fiscal cliff. they deal with honoring the last surviving world war i veteran who died last year dealing with drywall safety and things. and there will be a couple meetings again democrats in one room and republicans in the other, and they will try to see if the republican leaders and the democratic leaders have produced if they can possibly sell this to the house of representatives. historically that has been a hard, hard sell. >> you know, you have been
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keeping us uh prized all morning and all afternoon and in the evening with your e-mails and your blog. one of the things you pointed out today is that it is not necessarily that line of taxes. no one above or below a certain point. but it is the spending cuts that are really the target, that are really the sticking point. why is that? >> that's always the hardest part. back to the 1980s when the deficits have started to explode, there have been four or five pieces of legislation over the past 30 years dating back to hollings that was the first sequester. the republicans in the house of representatives, they feel they were elected in 2010 to come here and cut spending. dealing with the tax increases, that's a smaller piece. and that seems to be the focus of these talks right now. getting everybody's hands wrapped around the spending component which again the super committee was supposed to take care of last year, they failed. the budget control act, other
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provisions, all of these things have failed because nobody wants to give. and that's why it is going to be tough to get this through the house of representatives because these republicans are locked in. they say, look, we have cut some spending here this past year. but it was not cut enough. it was not cut deeply enough. they say hold on, we have already cut. that's the longer heads. getting this through the house will be an uphill climb. >> and statistically, when you look at the surveys americans are dug in on the issue too. they want us to bring our spending under control as well. i want to bring everybody up to speed. i am seeing a lot of activity on my twitter and facebook. what have they been doing for the past six months? that's a good question. this was a man made date this deadline, january 1st. >> absolutely. that's when the tax cuts would go up. january 2nd is when the sequester kicks in. that's by statute out in the budget control act passed last year. you have some people who say, look, we have already gone off the physician kl cliff.
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there has been a little stagnation in the economy, housing starts and so on. some people think this is just a deadline. the chair of the senate finance committee said to me yesterday, he said look this deadline is red-hot. there is a reason there are deadlines. if they are able to pull a rabbit out of a hat and maybe agree to spending cuts or an agreement to do it down the road you may see a favorable market reaction. you may not see a credit down grade from moody's and s&p and the other agencies that are watching this like a hawk. that's going to be the key. but history tells us that getting these spending cuts is very, very tough. >> i guess all deadlines are man made. before i let you go, you have been watching the players come in and out. it is a nuance they have called in staff level employees. it is not just the deal makers makers and those leaders around the table anymore. >> i remember when we were here on the weekend in september of 2008 when they
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were working out the tarp. this is the troubled asset relief program that dealt with the bailouts. you have principal players here. house and then speaker who was in the minority of the house of the representatives, and you have the treasury secretary who were literally walking back and forth. this is true shuttle diplomacy and paper. here what they have done is set this down to the staff level and said can you work out these five or six different items? a lot of different issues, you already know what it costs. they have been through the super committee. they have already worked up the cost of these things. so they have some degree of expectation. the leaders know where the votes are. >> that's an interesting and important point you just made. i wrote that down. a lot of these things have been looked at. people wonder, well, even if they make a deal, can they get it through the budget committee that would look at this? if a lot of these things have been vetted, we uh -- we
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appreciate you. not a lot of people get to see you. >> thanks for having me. >> i will let you know if they make anymore progress. meanwhile, this is an interesting side story. starbucks is expanding a campaign encouraging both political sides to come together in compromise on a fiscal cliff. the coffee chain introducing mess seemings written on coffee cups to inspire lawmakers. look at the employees. now the company will expand the efforts to all united states stores. so when they get your -- like your double whip or whatever you will get and then it says vote. a starbucks spokesperson they want to encourage sharply divided lawmakers. soldiers in mexico discovering a smuggling tunnel and headed straight toward our border. the mexican army officials say they found the place after receiving an anonymous tip that armed men were patrolling a home in nogales.
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that is just over the line between arizona and mexico. soldiers say they found the tunnel behind a fake wall in a house. it was equiped with lighting and ventilation and stretched for about 120 yards, longer than a football field. they believe smugglers were building the tunnel to bring drugs into arizona, but a u.s. border patrol person says it didn't actually reach all the way into the u.s. no word of any arrests. a bus explodes. it was parked next to a hotel. at least six people are dead. it is our top story as we go around the world in 80 seconds. pakistan, that explosion near a railway station in the southern at the of karachi. fire ripping through the park bus leaving a metal skeleton. other cars surrounding the bus damaged in the explosion. it is not yet clear if a bomb caused it or an exploding gas
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cylinder. many run on natural gas. china, a blizzard slamming inner mongol -- mongolia. the storm started yesterday and dumping three feet of snow by this morning. the temperatures are expected to plummet over the next two days. japan, the newly installed prime minister is taking a tour of the fukushima nuclear plant. a massive earthquake devastated the place in 2011. they are considering plans to phase-out the atomic energy altogether over the next several decades. spain, a flower in the face. it is the annual flower fight using eggs and firecrackers and flour. and it is a day marking the innocence, spain's equivalence of april fool's.
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it is this fox trip around the world in 80 seconds. a french constitutional panel is saying goodbye to that country's staggering 75% tax rate on the wealthy. the panel has ruled the tax is unconstitutional and unfair. let me say it again. 75% on the wealthy. it was set to kick in at the start of 2013 and will hit anyone hitting a million euros. critics didn't like it. they said it would drive away france's wealthy population. joining me now on the phone from paris is katherine fields. she is a correspondent for global radio news. katherine, why was this tax overturned? >> it was overturned because the court said it failed to rec recognize equality before public burden. what this means is it has been applied to individuals rather than households. the court knows this top rate would have applied to a married couple, for example, if one member was in that upper income bracket.
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well, if it turned just under, then the 75% rate would not apply. in essence, this was thrown out on a technicality. if was a poorly worded law that just didn't pass the constitutional barrier. >> you know, it is kind of confusing. the president actually campaigned on this75% tax. what happened, and will he try to get it reinstated? >> you are quite right. he made this a key platform of his manifesto. he has gone all out on this, and he even dressed up the tax as an act that the way france's rich could help during harsh economic times. he has not backed down and in fact in the last few hours the officials have said the law will be redrafted to conform with the court ruling and will be resubmitted to law i can makers probably -- to lawmakers in the next few weeks, at the most within a month. >> well keep us posted on
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that. they are pushing back tonight in france against that law. we'll have to see what happens. thank you. well, it was a wake up call nobody wanted. a car slammed into a house early this morning and people were inside when it happened. now they are doing -- how they are doing now and what police are saying about the guy who was behind the wheel coming up. also, somebody -- nobody throws a new year's party like new york city, and people here are getting ready for the action in time square a couple blocks from where we are now at fox news headquarters. from the con feta to the plans to the ball drop how people are planning on the new year. bring on the party. >> ♪ rocking on the top world ♪ rocking on top of the world ♪ ♪ lift your spirits ♪ rocking on top of the world ♪ ♪ rocking on top of the world ♪
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police in new york city evacuating several buildings after finding some potentially explosive powder outside an apartment. it happened in greenwich village. they spotted white powder in an ashtray. that's according to the new york post newspaper which is owned by the parent company of the network. sources tell the paper, police say they believe the powder is a mixture of organic explosive and some other substance. they say investigators also found a shotgun, two magazines for handguns. tonight two people are in custody. a georgia mom is pleading for her children back after they didn't return home from a trip with their dad. benjamin clear re, seen here, is 9 years old and his brother on the left is henry who is 7. investigators say their dad was apparently taking them and their mom clearly worried. >> he abandoned his car. he is driving a car nobody knew about. his house is cleared out. he is only using cash. >> police say they believe the dad, daniel clear re, is --
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clear reis armed. they were last seen at a chattanooga wal-mart on video. if you have seen them, call police in your area. a major fire forcing evacuations on the southwest side of the -- of chicago. the flames tearing through a warehouse. it broke out near the transit system's pink line. it forced officials to evacuate the entire area. it partially suspended service. it took firefighters about three hours to get it under control. firefighters pulling off an amazing rescue at a burning home. it is our first stop on a fox trip across america. oklahoma, one person escaped the house on fire in oklahoma city, but an elderly man and his dogs were trapped. firefighters rushed in and pulled them out to safety with only seconds to spare. the man is expected to be okay. the dogs were a little shaken up, but the first responders were ready. >> we have equipment, special equipment to put oxygen on.
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the dogs are doing well now. >> they say the same home caught fire a day earlier. they blame a faulty fireplace. california, a driver running right off the road and into a home in suburban sacramento. the car blasting a huge hole in the side of the house. two people were inside, but thankfully unhurt. police are investigating the man behind the wheel for drunk driving. new york, the snow must go. football fans hitting ralph wilson stadium to clear out the place before sunday's game. workers paid $10 an hour, not too bad for true blue bills fans. >> it is a fun time. usually off during the holidays, and you get to go and take some cool photos. >> rhode island, hmm. christmas trees. turns out goats love them. a farm outside providence is taking old christmas trees from around town so the goats
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can feast away. >> it started a few years back when we gave them our own christmas tree. >> the pushier ones will get there first and then the wimpy ones will have what is left. >> that's across america. in new york they are getting ready for the biggest new year's eve party in the world. it is tradition alley times square. organizers prepared to welcome a million people at the crossroads of the world. anna is live at our headquarters right around the corner from time square. anna, new york and everybody else is getting ready for the -- for this? >> absolutely, they are enjoying all of the holiday decorations and taking pictures of the santa clause christmas trees we have on our plaza. just a couple blocks away is the one and only time square. we are certainly hoping and crossing our fingers hoping for a little better weather on monday night. earlier today time square officials tested out the confetti that will be falling from the sky on monday.
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and they threw it out a window. some unsuspecting people on the streets. more than a million revelers will be watching the ball drop on monday and a billion more will be watching from home. the 2013 sign is situated on top of one time square and harris it is seven feet tall. as far as those people who are out there dreading 201 throughy and thinking it is something that will be bringing them bad luck for the year, no need to fear. there are good luck charms attached to the 13 that will be dropping along with the ball in time square. >> awesome. you know, growing up there was one person who was always there for new year's eve. and of course we will be without that person this year. >> that's right. dick clark is who you are referring to. four decades he was a part of the celebration for many americans. it is not going to be the same this 2013, but there will be a special tribute to him and a special waterford crystal with his nam engraved will be in the ball that will be dropping on monday night. we l speak with his wife,
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carrie clark, who says she remembers watching the weather report this time of year since she knew she would be outside for so many hours with him. she always looked forward to their new year's eve kiss. >> i sort of separate the only way i can deal with this whole thing is i think of the television dick clark and not my husband. and then i can deal with it. if i have to think that is my husband and he is not here, that's hard. >> well fox newschannel is hosting an all-american new year's eve special again on monday night from 11:00 until 12:30. it will be featuring performances from pat ben gnaw tar and sara brightman and the cast from the tony award-winning musical "million dollar quartet." i will be out there with the millions of revelers out packed in time square as well. i will be reporting alongside some of the other fox newschannel person naments. -- personalities. >> excellent. i can't wait to see you guys out there. i will be watching at home in arizona with my whole family.
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go anna. >> bundle up, right? it will be cold. >> good to see you. millions of americans are out of work. but good news, there is a place hiring big time. the money is pretty good too, but there is a catch. there is always a catch.
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if you are looking for work there are jobs to be had. as i mentioned, there is a catch. the well-paying jobs are far north in canada. canadian energy companies are recruiting inside the united states, and they are trying to lure out of work americans to fill a lot of positions. the opportunities, we are told, are only expected to grow. anita vogel has more. >> from the california desert to the great white north, canada is hoping to lure some skilled american workers across the border. >> we have a lot of people
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retiring, and we have a lot of major infrastructure projects mines being built, hydro electric ports and all of the infrastructure and oil and gas. it is kind of endless. >> the minister of energy in the province of alberta says canada is looking to double its oil production over the next 10 years, but it needs more trained workers. >> the kind of positions that are open are people who are engineers, people who have welding skills, people who are are -- who have skill sets in construction. it is a wide range. >> and they are looking by posting ads on youtube and holding job fares with the help of u.s. officials. >> how are you doing? >> he is one of 600 people who recently stood in line at a job fare near palm springs, california. he is willing to move to support his two young children. >> everybody has to make sacrifices in life to go anywhere. opportunity presents itself, you might as well reach out
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and grab it. >> with british columbia and alberta presenting a shortage of more than 150,000 over the next decade, americans have an opportunity to earn big money, up to $150,000 a year or more for some trades. the average temperature here in the winter hovers around freezing. but the province of alberta boasts a household median income of $83,000 a year compared to $50,000 in the u.s. so many canadian firms are hoping americans won't worry so much about the weather and focus instead on the cold, hard cash. iron worker mike reardon left minnesota for alberta's capital city of edmonton which serves as a stapling ground for many of the big oil companies. he is now making twice what he was back home. >> there is so much work out there. the opportunities are basically endless up here right now. there is obviously a shortage of workers. you could go anywhere and make some pretty good money. >> while some americans have relocated, others choose to send the money back home.
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anita vogel, fox news. >> we'll get the latest news from capitol hill right now. if we can take a live look in washington, senate leaders and their staff members are still at it in their offices working to keep higher taxes and spending cuts from going into affect on new year's day. it is fox top story tonight. and we will meet children who are making music out of other people's garbage. recycling it into musical instruments. these guys are so talented. ♪
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some parents think the music their kids listen to is, well, garbage. in one part of paraguay, it is true. that's only though that the instruments they are playing are made out of garbage. ♪ these kids are playing instruments maiden tierl from recycled materials. the man who formed the orchestra said he wanted to get children off the streets by teaching music, but nobody had any money. so they turned to the dump. they ended up turning trash into something beautiful. recapping our top stories now, president george h.w. bush is out of

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